Email from Prague

Dear comrades

The Communist Youth Union (KSM) in the Czech Republic was officially dissolved by the authorities on 12th October 2006.

On 16th October 2006 the KSM received a letter from the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic informing us that the KSM had finally been dissolved. It happened in spite of a large campaign against the danger of banning the organisation of young communists in the Czech Republic.

Thousands of citizens of the Czech Republic signed a petition against the campaign of the Interior Ministry to make the KSM illegal. The protests against the banning of the KSM were supported, for example, by the organisation of former antifascist fighters, student organisations, political parties and civic associations.

The campaign received massive support abroad. Hundreds of significant youth and student organisations, trade unions and political parties, together with thousands of people protested at the Ministry of Interior and embassies of the Czech Republic in their countries.

Solidarity with the KSM was expressed by a large number of MPs, famous intellectuals and personalities like Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, Zapatista leader Marcos and singer Bono Vox from U2.

Demonstrations in support of the KSM were organised in front of embassies of the Czech Republic in many countries. The World Federation of Democratic Youth initiated an International day of solidarity with the KSM on 27th February 2006.

The Ministry of Interior originally impugned the status of the KSM as a civic association under pretext that the goals of KSM’s activity interfered with an area restricted to activities of political parties.

The Interior Ministry further stated that behaviour of the KSM was illegal because it was based on the theories of Marx, Engels and Lenin and that it proclaimed the necessity of socialist revolution.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Interior did not use any of those arguments for the dissolution of the KSM. The only reason that has led officially to the dissolution of the KSM is that the KSM reflects the necessity of replacing private ownership of means of production with collective ownership in its programme.

The KSM, in spite of its official dissolution by the state power, is going to carry on the struggle for the rights of majority of young people – students, young workers and unemployed – and for socialism!

The KSM is going to challenge the decision of the Ministry of Interior in court.

The banning of the KSM was committed in the atmosphere of a militant anticommunist witch-hunt, various anticommunist campaigns and attacks and new calls for the criminalisation of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

The decision of the Ministry of Interior was taken only a week before local and Senate elections in which the KSCM participates.

It is necessary to stand up internationally against this illegalisation and criminalisation of the communist movement in the Czech Republic.

We ask you therefore to express your solidarity with the KSM and to protest against this unprecedented move of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic at the embassy of the Czech Republic in your country.

With your international support it is possible and it is vital to defeat all the anticommunist and antidemocratic attacks!

Declaration by the Bureau of the GUE-NGL Group in the European Parliament

NO TO POLITICAL CRIMES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Brussels, 17 October 2006,

It is with consternation that we have just heard that the Czech Republic's interior minister has announced the dissolution of the country's "Communist Youth Union" on the pretext that this organisation advocates, in its programme ... "the collective ownership of means of production" instead of the "private ownership of these means"! This is unbelievable!

The threat of that this kind of step would be taken has been hanging over this organisation for a long time, resulting in a huge wave of solidarity for it in the Czech Republic and beyond. The fact this threat has been put into practice calls, in our view, for a far more significant reaction. This is of direct concern to the European Union: the values on which it is based are not compatible with a political crime.

The enemies of democracy are those who preach racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia as well as those who carry out violent acts or who call for war. This is not the case - and with good reason! - of the " Communist Youth Union". Let those who do not share their views confront them in the framework of a two-sided debate. We invite democrats of all opinions not to let this dangerous precedent pass without reacting.